Scripture Daily

Context No. 3795 of 4322 · Exodus

Context · Reflection

Exodus 34:21-25: in context

21“Six days you shall work, but on the seventh day you shall rest: in plowing time and in harvest you shall rest. 22“You shall observe the feast of weeks with the first fruits of wheat harvest, and the feast of harvest at the year’s end. 23Three times in the year all your males shall appear before the Lord GOD, the God of Israel. 24For I will drive out nations before you and enlarge your borders; neither shall any man desire your land when you go up to appear before the LORD, your God, three times in the year. 25“You shall not offer the blood of my sacrifice with leavened bread. The sacrifice of the feast of the Passover shall not be left to the morning.

Among these renewed commands, one line stands out for its pointed timing: six days you shall work, but on the seventh day you shall rest; even in plowing time and in harvest you shall rest. Plowing and harvest were the busy, demanding seasons of the farmer's year, when the weather would not wait and every day counted.

And precisely there, God says, you shall still rest. This is a searching test of trust. It is easy to rest when there is little to do, but to stop working on the seventh day in the middle of harvest, when there is so much to be done and time seems short, requires real faith that God, not our own frantic labor, is the one who provides. To keep the sabbath in the busy season is to confess that the harvest is finally in God's hands, not ours. The command guards us from the lie that everything depends on our unceasing work. There are seasons when the pressure to keep going never lets up; God's word is that even then, we are to rest in him.

Even in my busy, demanding seasons, will I trust God enough to rest as he commands, confessing that the harvest is finally in his hands and not dependent on my unceasing labor?

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